Modern Alphabets (Single Link Flickr Post)
posted by grumblebee on Dec 14, 2009 - 24 comments

TypeWar: How well do you know your fonts?
posted by flatluigi on Nov 2, 2009 - 22 comments

Type Design on the Radio. TTBOOK (previously) does an hour-long program about typography (podcast here, RM stream here). Segments include interviews with Jonathan Hoefler and Tobias Frere-Jones of Gotham fame (they say their "Obama Font" worked best of those in the campaign; others agree), a Verdana-centric interview with Matthew Carter (he comments on the IKEA kerfluffle), and interview Kitty Burns Florey, author of Script and Scribble: The Rise and Fall of Handwriting . [more inside]
posted by Mngo on Nov 1, 2009 - 18 comments

Make your handwriting into a font! [more inside]
posted by Korou on Sep 8, 2009 - 52 comments

Ikea de-Futurafies. You may have noticed something at once familiar and unfamiliar about the 2009 Ikea catalogue: The company switched from a custom variant of Futura to the font you stare at all day in your browser, Verdana. And type nerds are losing their shit! [more inside]
posted by joeclark on Aug 26, 2009 - 167 comments

Cars + fonts = the iQ font.
posted by billysumday on Jul 20, 2009 - 32 comments

Stelae for 7/7. The London 7/7 Memorial consists of “52 pillars (or ‘stelae’), cast in rough textured stainless steel, each representing one of the victims” of the 2005 terrorist bombing attack. Typographer Phil Baines (profile) explains the development of the rough-hewn yet “British” typeface, based on “the 19th-century, untutored signmakers’ sansserif you see on buildings around the city,” that is moulded into the living steel.
posted by joeclark on Jul 8, 2009 - 15 comments

Stereotypes -- Derided by typophiles as crass, "ethnic type" has a revealing taxonomy and, surprisingly, serves a purpose.
posted by cog_nate on Jun 19, 2009 - 66 comments

Custom Letters is an evolving category that includes calligraphy, sign painting, graffiti, stone carving, digital lettering, hand lettering, paper sculpture, and type design.
posted by minifigs on Jun 18, 2009 - 17 comments

FONT FIGHT! the long-awaited (by me and other fontaholics) follow-up to Font Conference. Better than the first IMO, but I'm sure we can still take issue with some of the 'characters'. [more inside]
posted by wendell on May 7, 2009 - 37 comments

Joe Palca, a science correspondent for NPR's Morning Edition, was meditating on the best way to convey the magnitude of the world's largest known prime number, 2^43112609-1. He contacted H&FJ at Typography.com to discuss the implications of typesetting a number with more than twelve million digits. Crunching of numbers and fonts ensued.
posted by netbros on Apr 22, 2009 - 21 comments

The Ministry of Type is a weblog about type, typography, lettering, calligraphy and other related things. The FontFeed, from the folks at FontShop, is a daily dispatch of recommended fonts, typography techniques, and inspirational examples of digital type at work in the real world. [more inside]
posted by netbros on Mar 31, 2009 - 12 comments

The Periodic Table of Typefaces (fully-readable close-up) Two great nerd-memes (Periodic Tables and Font Collecting) that look great together. After looking it over, I'm happy to say it has no room for Comic Sans or Arial or Hobo, but sad to say it's also missing my personal guilty pleasure, Bookman. What's in it (or not in it) to your liking?
posted by wendell on Mar 9, 2009 - 37 comments

Comic book lettering has some grammatical and aesthetic traditions that are quite unique. What follows is a list that every letterer eventually commits to his/her own mental reference file.
posted by Brandon Blatcher on Feb 3, 2009 - 36 comments

Make your handwriting into a font with Yourfonts. Download the PDF, draw your alphabet, scan and upload, then download the finished result. Examples. Via Drawn!
posted by Rinku on Feb 2, 2009 - 31 comments

Decodeunicode.org has a useful and full-featured search for the names and glyphs for those Unicode characters that display as a plain box full of despair. It is presented by the Department of Design at the University of Applied Sciences in Mainz. Roll the dice ⚅⚄ and try it out. [more inside]
posted by TheOnlyCoolTim on Jan 23, 2009 - 25 comments

If you're feeling guilty about that long flight from San Francisco to Berlin you can use EcoFonts (which is created by omitting parts of the letter) to assuage your carbon-heavy guilt.
posted by plexi on Jan 14, 2009 - 56 comments

Enter some text and see it written in all the fonts installed on your system
posted by slater on Jan 5, 2009 - 46 comments

Cartype has a huge repository of vehicle logos and other related typography. [more inside]
posted by 1f2frfbf on Dec 15, 2008 - 5 comments

Your favorite rock typefaces. [more inside]
posted by ardgedee on Nov 16, 2008 - 17 comments

Definitive guide to fonts on Mad Men. Mostly the fonts that didn’t exist during the time of the show. Not every single thing is “historically accurate,” apparently. [more inside]
posted by joeclark on Oct 7, 2008 - 23 comments

Ever since Napoleon Dynamite became a surprise hit in the summer of 2003, and the subsequent rise of Judd Apatow a trend in sentimental but cynical film comedy was born. But this post isn't about the comedy.. [more inside]
posted by mediocre on Sep 5, 2008 - 61 comments

Can you guess these movies from just one letter of the poster? Empire has put together a little quiz to test your movie font knowledge. Guess the movies from just one letter in the film's poster title. Via Neatorama
posted by daHIFI on Aug 11, 2008 - 40 comments

Font Conference. A video from CollegeHumor which made me laugh more than a video from CollegeHumor really should.
posted by jacquilynne on Jul 22, 2008 - 58 comments

The handwriting of typographers.
posted by oneirodynia on Jul 10, 2008 - 21 comments

The Rather Difficult Font Quiz Do you know your Birch from your Bembo from your Bauer Bodini (Hey! Where's Bookman?) At the moment, 34 fonts to identify with more coming soon. A fun way to spend 2-3 minutes and learn just how much a font nerd you really are. (I only got 25 out of 34? I'm ashamed!) [more inside]
posted by wendell on Apr 14, 2008 - 39 comments

60 Brilliant Typefaces (for corporate design) plus 40 free ones. From Smashing Magazine (prev), which last year presented 80 Beautiful Typefaces for Professional Design [more inside]
posted by criticalbill on Mar 20, 2008 - 34 comments

Typematching: Can Mistral find love with Papyrus? Who cares? Scroll down to find out which of these 6 stereotypical fonts is your type...
"But...but... I can't be Comic Sans!!!"
posted by wendell on Mar 13, 2008 - 47 comments

The MeeK FM Typographic Synthesizer(tube.)
posted by geos on Feb 29, 2008 - 17 comments

The story behind Woody Allen's signature typeface (with screengrabs from each film). Via. [more inside]
posted by growabrain on Jan 30, 2008 - 42 comments

Israeli designer Oded Ezer produces stunning works of experimental typography. He has been lauded for creating [PDF link]"...Hebrew characters that melt," but it is his more unconventional work that is truly breathtaking - made up of letters with vivacity and personality. He calls his gorgeously abstracted work "typo art," existing wholly neither in the space of art or typography, with hope that it might transcend language altogether. See his flickr stream for more sketches, works, and arresting typescapes.
posted by youarenothere on Jan 9, 2008 - 21 comments

A Website about Corporate Identity. A large archive of corporation logos with design credits, typeface identification (or, at least the typographic roots of the ID's.) and Pantone color information. Not at all complete, but it's a very nice start. Hopefully it will continue to expand. via: Grain Edit (design blog)
posted by JBennett on Nov 7, 2007 - 11 comments

So You Want to Create a Font (Part 1, Part 2). For something with a less presumptive title, there’s this, this, this, this, this, or even this, Eric Gill’s An Essay on Typography.
posted by tepidmonkey on Oct 29, 2007 - 15 comments

Why is Lithos is so pervasive on the covers of books by African American authors? What does Hot Tamale, or Bagel, or Faux Chinese imply? Rob Giampietro and Jessica Helfand share ruminations on stereotypography.[3quarksdaily] [Design Observer] [Giampietro+Smith]
posted by litfit on Oct 21, 2007 - 54 comments

It’s easy to talk about Adrian Frutiger in the past tense, since his most influential fonts – Univers, Egyptienne, and the eponymous Frutiger – are all at least thirty years old. But he is still alive, and in the summer of 2006, as he was presented with the Society for Typographic Aficionados’ annual Typography Award, type designer Mark Simonson gave a presentation on how Frutiger [pdf, 18 MB] affected, and continues to affect, him and all others who benefit from good typography.
posted by tepidmonkey on Oct 3, 2007 - 14 comments

Inscribed in the living tile: Type in the Toronto subway by Joe Clark [more inside]
posted by chunking express on Sep 16, 2007 - 62 comments

Fontfilter -- ever wondered what font a logo uses? Wonder no more. (site's in German but the chart is simple--there's also a reversed one, by font instead of by company)
posted by amberglow on May 29, 2007 - 14 comments

Gems of Penmanship, Penman's Leisure Hour, Ninety-five Lessons in Ornamental Penmanship, The Champion Method of Practical Business Writing and other Rare Books on Calligraphy and Penmanship from the 19th and early 20th centuries. Lots of neat tidbits. [via mlarson.org]
posted by mediareport on Feb 24, 2007 - 12 comments

Misprinted Type.
posted by hama7 on Oct 23, 2006 - 22 comments

An open letter to John Warnock. "Please consider releasing eight to twelve core fonts into the public domain. The amount of revenue lost from a small core set of fonts surely can’t have a significant impact on Adobe’s bottom line."
posted by DrJohnEvans on Aug 30, 2006 - 53 comments

Type, handwriting, and lettering
posted by persona non grata on Aug 20, 2006 - 17 comments

Spelling with zombies.
posted by EarBucket on Aug 16, 2006 - 35 comments

Hans Reichel (previously) is a man of many talents. His own site (flash/sound) is fun (often funny) and chock full of agreeably wacky sounds, but can take some time to navigate. Reichel hasn't made it easy for you if you happen to be in a hurry. You may well get stuck somewhere and just give up. That'd be a shame, though, cause you'd miss getting acquainted with the guitars he makes and plays. Or how he designs fonts. The mixing board shenanigans are not to be missed (once you get past those curious little fellows in the brown hats), plus you can sorta kinda play his daxophone yourself. And of course conduct your own little ensemble of meercats when one of them finally comes out of hiding and says "Hallo! Play with me".
posted by flapjax at midnite on Aug 3, 2006 - 6 comments

How Sub-Pixel Rendering Works: a method of anti-aliasing, sub-pixel rendering (or ClearType as Microsoft calls it) exploits the fact that pixels on LCD screens are actually made up of three sub-pixels: red, blue, and green. By constructing fonts using the sub-pixels, the results are arguably smoother lines and easier-to-read type. Sadly (or happily) CRTs benefit little, if at all, from the technology.
posted by falconred on Feb 28, 2006 - 33 comments

Typographica's Favorite Fonts of 2005
posted by plexi on Dec 29, 2005 - 13 comments

The Pixel Plant offers 150 Pixel Fonts for between Free and 45 cents each.
posted by dobbs on Oct 22, 2005 - 7 comments

Not My Type - An office and its occupants, made entirely of typographic characters, create a theatre of emotion. View the separate animations (Flash) 1, 2, 3 and 4. Also, visit an article on the work's concept development and storyboarding process. And there's more via Google.
posted by sjvilla79 on Aug 16, 2005 - 11 comments

Gothic fonts , aka Blackletter, aka Fraktur are often associated with Nazi propaganda these days. And indeed, at the beginning the Nazis encouraged their use...that is, until, in one of the most bizarre decrees of the Third Reich, Hitler declared them "non-German" and even "Jewish" and banned them with immediate effect. Funny thing is, Fraktur would take its vengeance on Hitler fans forty years later... (And before any typographic pedant points it out, yes, I know Fraktur is a subdivision of the Gothic/Blackletter family of fonts)
posted by Skeptic on Aug 9, 2005 - 32 comments

The Scourge of Arial. It has spread like a virus through the typographic landscape and illustrates the pervasiveness of Microsoft's influence in the world. Arial, however, has a rather dubious history and not much character. In fact, Arial is little more than a shameless impostor...
posted by Robot Johnny on Aug 9, 2005 - 97 comments

Illustrated Notes from Computer Science: Tom Murphy VII gets more bored in class than you. And thanks to his free fonts, your boredom can look just as snazzy. (Previous Tom7-related action here. This guy keeps busy. I blame the 80/20 rule.)
posted by nebulawindphone on Mar 15, 2005 - 14 comments